November 27, 2009

Disclaimer: I work for a phone company. A big one. Plus I heart science BUT I do not claim to represent the company views with this post…

Just so we’re clear – this is me speaking.

Just me.

OK? Still with me?

Right: cellphones do not give you cancer.

Whew. Glad I got that off my chest.

It really bugs me that there’s so much misinformation about cellphones and how they work. Bandy about terms like “radiation” and “electro magnetic frequency” and people seem to think about CT scanners, X-Ray machines and death rays.

It’s just radio people. Radio. The same radio we’ve had for a hundred years, the same radio that sat in the corner of your grandmother’s parlour so she could listen to Churchill declare war, the same radio that has been bouncing content around the globe for a hundred years.

Radio.

And yet… there is a group of people who think cellphones and cellphone towers are somehow different. That they somehow put out a different kind of radio, that somehow, despite no evidence to prove it, that cellphones and cellphone towers create cancerous growths because they use “radiation”.

Where to begin.

Cellphone towers – let’s start with those.

I found this lovely site – EMF Explained – which has a lovely picture that compares the various transmitters and their power output.

So, assuming there is some cause for concern (and I refute that) and that radio waves are a killer and must be blocked (again, I refute that) then we must immediately turn off the TV and radio masts based on impact to the environment.

What’s that? TV and radio are important and you’ve only just got good signal and you don’t want to miss Celebrity Master Chef?

Now to be reasonable, TV and radio masts are one-way beasts. They stand in the hills and blast radiation (sorry, radio) out to the masses. They don’t get built on your street.

Cellphones are two way devices – they need to be closer to the tiny little units that will send and receive the signal so there are more of them and some of them are very ugly. But some look like rubbish bins or lamposts or chimney pots so it’s all good.

Incidentally, I’ve just installed a 3G booster in my house. It’s sitting in the kitchen. I live in the shadow of a hill so get poor coverage but with this thing (which looks like a wi-fi box and acts like a wi-fi box and generally just sits there with no buttons but a red light saying it’s on) I can actually make and receive phone calls. This is good.

So what about cellphones themselves? You hold them up to YOUR HEAD! ZOMG THE RADIATION IT BURNS OH IT BURNS!

In effect, cellphones can put out up to 0.2 Watts of power. The further away from a cellsite they are, the more power they use, so if you REALLY want to minimise the power output of your phone, have a cellsite close at hand.

Let me say that again – if you’re concerned about cellphones giving you cancer, make sure you’re close to a cellphone tower when you’re talking on the phone. Oh the irony.

Chris Barton has been mentioned in this pages before (more often than I would like frankly) but he’s here again because he’s written a well reasoned piece for the Herald on Sunday about all of this.

The World Health Organisation is putting out a report called Interphone which looks at a large number of studies from around the world reviewing cellphones and whether they cause adverse medical side effects.

Let me give you the short version: they do not.

Let me give you the slightly longer version: low levels of use of a cellphone appear to give you fewer brain tumours than NOT using a cellphone.